With a task as mundane as scanning your groceries at the checkout, mistakes are bound to happen. You know, the usual: sometimes you accidentally take something home for free, sometimes you charge yourself twice, and sometimes… you go to jail. 🤯
That’s what happened last February to a Dutch woman and her daughter in Amsterdam, at the Stadionplein Albert Heijn location.
Their quick supermarket stop turned into a traumatising jail experience, as RTL Nieuws reports.
How a mistake turned into a nightmare
Marianne (63) and her daughter Fauve (25) were on their way home from a long day of shopping for Marianne’s company anniversary party.
They were tired but decided to stop at Albert Heijn for some groceries. That’s when things got a bit hectic.
They ended up with more groceries than expected and decided to split the bill — some items were for Marianne and Fauve, while the rest were for the company.
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Camera footage shows them engaging in the chaotic routine of scanning a large grocery haul. As often happens, they made some mistakes, scanning a head of lettuce twice while missing three other items entirely.
“I have nothing to hide”
When the supermarket staff checked the two and found the mistake, they initially shrugged it off with a laugh. When the staff asked them to pay a €181 fine, however, things got serious.
@santanamath Dutch News: Grocery stores in The Netherlands combating shoplifting with a special camera. #dutchnews #nederland🇳🇱 #livinginthenetherlands ♬ News, news, seriousness, tension(1077866) – Lyrebirds music
Marianne insisted that it was just a mistake, and refused to pay the fine. When the staff said they would call the police, she didn’t flinch. “I said: call them, I have nothing to hide,” she tells RTL.
The worst part? The three forgotten items weren’t even expensive: it was chocolate, grapes, and a shopping bag.
Six hours in jail
The mother and daughter were taken to a police station for interrogation; they were separated, stripped, searched, and left in a small square cell for hours.
“After half an hour, I pressed the bell that was hanging in the cell. I asked: what is the purpose, how long do I have to sit here? I really got confused,” Marianne recalls.
Due to the stress, she started feeling unwell and asked to see a doctor. “I really started to panic,” she says.
Eventually, after being interrogated by two detectives, they were released. At midnight, they made their way home in the pouring rain, exhausted and traumatised.
Salt on the wound
Even though the prosecutor declared them “wrongly identified as suspects,” the Albert Heijn location in question still banned them from the store. 😳
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Marianne filed a complaint about it, but the store operator doubled down on his decision.
In a letter, he explained to her that the camera footage clearly showed them failing to offer the items in question for payment.
A widespread problem
Shoplifting cases don’t usually escalate this far: if the staff agrees that there has been a mistake, customers are often given the chance to simply pay for the “stolen” items.
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Indeed, people caught red-handed are given a fine and banned from the store, but police involvement is very rare.
However, with shoplifting increasing by 46% in the Netherlands in three years, these stories are becoming less rare, and stores are getting stricter.
Have you ever been caught forgetting to scan something at the store? How did it go? Tell us your stories in the comments below.